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Would you watch the drug olympics?

On a purely scientific level I'd love to see just how far drugs can take an athlete. I see this as having the added benefit of actually giving some numbers to the 'enhancing' bit of performace enhancing. As it stands drugs are banned from the sporting arenas but it is actually unknown as to the measure of performance gain.

Obviously an athlete may die, but hey, people die all the time.

Just think, you would be remembered if you ran a blisteringly fast 1000m and then your heart exploded

I think it would be kind of entertaining to not only put the athletes on steroids and performance enhancing drugs, but also downers and other sorts of illegal narcotics. Ecstasy, weed, shrooms, oxycotton, acid, etc. That would be much more entertaining that watching somebody on steroids, I think.

A few years ago The Times included a supplement with their Sunday paper, which was basically a mock-up of a newspaper from 25 years in the future.

The idea of it was to basically show their predictions of what will be happening in the world, and how it might have changed.

The only thing I remember from it was their prediction that the IOC will have lost the fight against drugs in sport, and changed policy such that drugs are permitted, and are an essential part of competing at the highest level.

I'm not sure I'd personally like to see that happen though. The idea is interesting but, as you say, pushing the limits like that would inevitably result in deaths. What good is a gold medal if you're not around to enjoy it

Yeah - drugs would almost certainly see performance increase significantly, but from an ethical point of view would always be a big no-no. Basically you would assume athletes are amongst the healthiest members of societies - which would be true of drug-free olympics.

The competitive nature of any athletic event would however mean pushing yourself to the absolute limit. Where drugs are involved this can only be a bad thing - in the short term, athletes would do outstandingly well, but wouldn't live the healthiest of lives in the long term (and would likely suffer some serious health problems before they get old).

From a scientific point of view it would be pretty interesting to see how far you could push the human body.

Actually I see no moral problem with athletes taking drugs.
It has ben argued a lot that if old Greeks were to have Olympics now all possible substances would be used.
As an athlete you leave for victory, who cares about what happens when you are not able to preform anymore.

And as far as health is concerned how is this any differnt from say brookers working long hours, under stress, drinking tons of coffee and consuming coke and I dont mean the one you keep in the fridge.

If someone would do some serious statistics regarding death rates of brookers at the age of say 50, I am pretty sure results would show attrition rate is on par with many an armies around the world

im an athlete and the way i see it, if you cant do it by yourself, you havent accomplished anything. thats the same thing as letting one runner start 50 yards ahead of the others. sure he might finish first, but he didnt earn it.

?? Are you taking a stab at me or do you mean that you believe a good portion of athletes cheat (given it's not allowed)?

im an athlete and the way i see it, if you cant do it by yourself, you havent accomplished anything. thats the same thing as letting one runner start 50 yards ahead of the others. sure he might finish first, but he didnt earn it.

That's why this olympics would be drug-only entries. Drugs can only enhance existing attributes. Giving say, speed to an 80 year old isn't going to make them very competitive.

And yes if you win vs other drug enhanced competitors you have earned it in exactly the same way as a drug-free event. The playfield isn't level for any event otherwise everybody would finish in the same place.

But on the scientific data note, I do think we need this data. Otherwise the 'performance enhancing' bit isn't measurable.

As a compromise why don't we get each contestant to do their event twice. Once without and once with enhancements. That sounds like a good sciencefair experiment.

Originally posted by Ponch They are kids mainly. Maybe not yours but still.

Well lets bring out the kids argument shell we.

Its OK to make kids addicted to all sort of stuff from sugar to TV, its OK to make them pretty much the slaves of consumer society and greedy little buggers, its OK to have 100s of 1000s dieing from hunger, but its NOT OK to let them use performance enhancing drugs in sports even if that is what they want to do.
And its not like many of them wont end up using them anyway. But instead of being a controlled and well supervised process it will be the kind of hidden affair that will get more of them killed as is necessary.
Oh and as for regular controls athletes have to go through, only fools get cought, so its not like anyone is preventing drugs being used in sports anyway.
Mind you once again, same as with all the prohibited substances, the premium one has to pay is filling someones pockets, and that someone is by no means too keen on having the whole thing legalized.

Its OK to make kids addicted to all sort of stuff from sugar to TV, its OK to make them pretty much the slaves of consumer society and greedy little buggers, its OK to have 100s of 1000s dieing from hunger, but its NOT OK to let them use performance enhancing drugs in sports even if that is what they want to do

Said who ? Looks like you managed to be wrong 4 times in one sentance. I was used to better from you.

F_A_L_C_O_N has a good point Ponch. A controlled environment is far better than an uncontrolled environment. If drugs were allowed then I doubt they would be used like the general population that abuse natural drugs. I'm refering to Vitamin tablets. All the things you take for a common cold for instance. It is accepted by decree of the layman that taking 4-6x the recommended dose is great. It will get you better way quicker, what do the people know who wrote the dosage instructions. They just want to sell you more tablets........ If it's not your kids doing that then it's probably the kids nextdoor.

So why not simple say. Drug olympics are an R20 event only. Just like the movies.

So Ponch, Falcon is just saying we let all sorts of things happen everyday. The 'it's ok' bit is referring to society which hardly steps in to change such activity (or lack thereof)

We are all somebodies kids - just when are we allowed to be adults and think/act for ourselves?